Dragon Thief (24 page)

For all I knew, there were dozens of secret passages out of Grünwald Castle. However, I had only seen one of them in a prophetic vision.

I had assumed that I had seen the Dragon Snake putting an end to me. It hadn't quite registered that I was making some unwarranted assumptions about who was wearing the dragon's body, and who was wearing Snake's.

I swooped down onto the ruins of Lysea's garden burning with rage and filled with an unnatural certainty. As my shadow flew across the nearly unbroken snow between the broken monuments, I saw a lone figure trudging away from the woods where Sir Forsythe had led us out of the catacombs. Snake was tiny, easily missed if not for the contrast between his sewage-encrusted clothes and the pristine snow.

He didn't realize he was in trouble until my shadow caught up with him. He looked back up over his shoulder and I think he might have screamed. I screamed back; a draconic roar bearing enough fury that, had I not exhausted my fire during the battle, would have left the legendary Snake little more than a sooty stain between the mausoleums.

The great Snake blubbered and dashed in a frantic, stumbling run toward Lysea's temple. I finally saw the family resemblance between him and Dudley.

As panicked as he was, no man on foot is going to outrun a dragon, even a clumsy, wounded one.

I fell on him just like the dragon in my vision. Almost. My vision had been slightly less clumsy. The real me stumbled a bit on landing and added a bit to the cemetery ruins after a couple of lumbering steps reaching for Snake.

Once in my taloned fist, he seemed remarkably tiny, even given my increase in size.

“P-Please! Mercy! Spare me.”

“Why?”
I grumbled low in my throat. The sulfur-flavored word stung my throat as smoke curled from my nostrils.

I felt something warm and wet spreading in my hand and I grimaced in disgust.
Is this creature really the almighty Snake Bartholomew? The man who almost stole two kingdoms?
I'd never been any great thief, and I had still managed not to wet myself the first time a dragon had grabbed me.

“I can pay you, riches beyond your imagining.”

“I can imagine quite a lot,”
I grumbled low.
“And your loot is safely in the Lendowyn treasury now, remember?”

“I have more . . .”

I shook my head slowly.

“And I'm a prince. Help me regain the Grünwald crown and . . .”

“You think I care about that? You think you have anything to offer me? You think there is
anything
that can compensate for what you've done?”
I raised him up to my face, hesitating only because I couldn't decide what was more appropriate: belching what remained of my fire into his face, biting his head off his body, or just squeezing him like an overripe grape.

From somewhere below us, I heard a slow clapping.

I glanced down and suffered from a sense of vertigo. Not from height this time, but from looking down at a ground that wasn't where the ground should be. The red-tinted mist floated around us, carrying the distant wails of a legion of agonized children.

Snake started blubbering again, “No. Not this. Anything but this.”

“Oh shut up.”

Below me, the Dark Lord Nâtlac walked into view, still clapping. “Impressive, Frank.”

Even in my new form, the Dark Lord's presence still felt incredibly unnerving, like maggots burrowing under my scales, or a thousand tiny
Dracheslayer
s poking into my brain.

“
Why are you here?
”

I felt Snake vainly trying to kick his way free of my grasp. He screeched, “Lord Nâtlac, save me!”

I briefly wondered why I was still a dragon in the Dark Lord's realm. Then Lord Nâtlac spoke and his gimlet words bore into my ears.

“There is something Prince Bartholomew can grant you. Some compensation for the troubles he has caused you.”

“What?”

Snake just shook his head and wept.

“You gave me the queen. Give me the prince.”

“No,” sobbed Snake.

I shook him and said,
“Shut up.”

“Sacrifice that wretch in my name, and all that is his can be yours.”

“He has nothing anymore.”
Not even any self-respect.

“Nothing?” asked the Dark Lord. Watching him smile was akin to watching an open wound give birth to a million spiders. “He has one thing you do not. Something you desperately want.”

“What would that be?”

“You know what it is, Frank. It is quivering in your palm.”

“I just have
 . . .”

Oh.

“You see now, don't you?”

“I had his body. With his history it is more trouble than it's worth.”

For the first time ever, I saw the Dark Lord Nâtlac nonplussed. It lasted a fraction of a second before the spider smile returned full force. “I have many followers, Frank, many bodies. That confused oaf of a knight of yours is considered handsome, isn't he?”

Sir Forsythe?
I shuddered internally.

“Give me this wretch, on this ground, and you can name your price.”

Even under assault by the gangrenous itch of the Dark Lord's presence, I instinctively realized something. The Dark Lord Nâtlac was not negotiating from a position of power.

What does he want?

“Why do you hesitate, Frank? You know that he would gladly give you to me.”

I looked at Snake, blubbering incoherently in my scaled fist.
“I am sure it is something he would do.”

“You know he deserves it.”

“I am certain he does.”

“What do you want, Frank? Name it.”

“I'm wondering what you want.”

“Only his soul.”

I laughed. It hurt, as if the air stabbed barbed fishhooks into the base of my teeth, but I couldn't help myself. Even Snake had stopped blubbering enough to stare at me as if I'd gone insane.

“What do you find amusing?” The slight displeasure in the Dark Lord's voice was enough to melt iron, but the dragon's bowels were made of sterner stuff.

“I'm sure you have his soul already. He's part of the Grünwald royal family. That's almost a given. No, you want his blood spilled here, in your name, by a nominal high priestess.”

“Meh, you're speaking in technicalities.”

Did the Dark Lord Nâtlac just say “Meh?”

“You live by technicalities.”

“That is all beside the point. Give me what I want and I can give you what you want.”

“But ‘here,' on ‘this ground' you said. We haven't left Lysea's garden, have we? That's why I'm still a dragon.
”

“Again, beside the point.”

“This is still her garden, isn't it? All it took was one offering and she took it back, and that galls you.”

“Enough of this!”
The Dark Lord Nâtlac tore free of his nominal human guise and suddenly loomed over me, the way I loomed over Snake. Everything about the Dark Lord's appearance was wrong in ways that it is impossible for me to articulate. It glared down at us with a face swirling with eyes, teeth, and waving insectile
things
.
“What do you want?”
the Dark Lord demanded.

I couldn't look at it. I averted my gaze and said,
“Your jewel thought me and Snake were alike.”

“Kindred spirits, meant to be thieves and kings,”
the Dark Lord said, half spoken, and half carved inside my skull with a rusty nail.

“
And he would sacrifice me to you.
”

“You know he would.”

“So what do I want?”

“Yes.”
The word was filled with loathsome desire, like the lust of a bloated corpse.

“I want to be different from him,”
I said.

“What?”
Even not looking at the Dark Lord, I could feel it deflate a bit.

“I don't want to be him, and I don't want to serve you.”

And just like that, the presence receded and the mists withdrew. I felt the air go cold again and I was back in Lysea's garden, in front of her temple. A small vortex of red mist and wrongness remained at the base of the stairs to Lysea's temple, and the more human-form Nâtlac stood within it.

“Well played, Frank Blackthorne.”

“Uh—”
Now
I
was left somewhat nonplussed. I had expected more pushback from an angry deity.

His smile was still full of spiders. “The jewel was not wrong. You can take the same horse down many different paths. Unlike Prince Bartholomew, though, yours seems not to lead toward me.”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Fair warning, Frank Blackthorne, we are not parting amicably. You have made an enemy.”

“I expect so.”

“You should consider if the blubbering idiot in your hand was worth it,” the Dark Lord said, vanishing in a swirl of red mist and unease.

I looked at Snake, who appeared to have completely withdrawn from the proceedings, shaking, weeping, burying his face into the scales of my fingers.

“No. He isn't.”

But it was never about him anyway.

In the end, Dermonica got Snake Bartholomew to do with as they wished and Lendowyn got a peace treaty that removed Dermonica troops from their soil. While Lendowyn had lost the services of most of the Grünwald defectors—aside from a handful like Sir Forsythe—Snake's attempted coup had damaged Grünwald's military to a point where it wouldn't be a threat for years. Lendowyn Castle was a mess. And, after all the foreign forces took their cut of Snake's loot, the treasury sat nearly empty.

But what else was new?

The girls stayed, and Lucille honored my offer to employ them. For some reason she had inherited my sensitivity to having retainers she could trust.

And, yeah, I was still a dragon.

Worse, sometime after I had crashed into the forest, I lost track of the Tear of Nâtlac. So I really
was
stuck. With Snake and Lucille back in their respective bodies, waiting a year and a day wouldn't do anything, and even someone dying wouldn't undo things.

Then again, even if I still had the Tear, what would I do with it? If I wore it, would I switch with Snake again? Snake the dragon wasn't a good idea. And if I didn't swap with Snake . . . was
anyone
else in this lizard skin a good idea?

So I camped out in the dragon's old lair while they worked to fix the castle. I spent my time healing and trying to resign myself to my fate. I told myself that I had adjusted to being a princess, I could adjust to this.

Of course, I
hadn't
adjusted to being a princess, which was why this had all happened in the first place.

 • • • 

I don't know how long I'd been sulking and licking my wounds when she came. I just opened my eyes, and there Lucille was, standing in the mouth of the dragon's cave, backlit by a rosy sunrise.

I groaned.

She walked down from the entrance. “How are you doing?”

I sighed, and the sound rumbled the ground beneath me.

“That well?”

I rolled on my side and snaked my neck so I could see her better.
“I think I know how you felt after you dive-bombed all those Grünwald archers.”

She smiled weakly. “Don't forget Elhared and that damn sword.”

“Yeah.”

“You'll heal.”

“I know.”

“Thank you.”

I snorted. It was a half chuckle, half sob.
“For what? It was my screw up—”

“Thank you for coming back.”

“
What else was I going to do?
”

“Assume Snake's identity. Find his treasure. Buy a small kingdom.” I don't know what it said about me that I'd never thought of that. She paced in front of me, slowly turning around the lair. “This is where we first met.”

“I know
 . . .”

“I remember thinking you were sort of a pathetic hero.”

“I guess I am.”

“No!” She spun around to face me. “You're not!”

“
Come on. Look at the mess I've made of things—”

“Would you please stop with the self-pity?”

I opened my mouth, and closed it as confused wisps of smoke curled out of my nostrils.

“I know you don't like lords and titles and nobility—”

“
What does that have to do—”

“Please shut up.”

I shut up.

“You might not like it, but you're in that role now. And when you say the lords and nobles aren't any better than anyone else, you're right. We're human. You're human.”

“Um—”

“You know what I mean!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“We all make mistakes. The difference is
our
mistakes affect whole kingdoms. The kind of noble you despise, the kind of noble Prince Bartholomew was, simply disregards the consequences of the power they wield. But you don't, even when you try and give it up.” She walked up to me and placed her hand on my nose. “You could be a great prince.”

“I never wanted to be a prince.”

“I didn't choose to be a princess either.”

“And I'm still a dragon.”

“I know how that feels.”

“And I'm sorry.”

“I told you to stop with the self-pity.”

“No, Lucille. I'm sorry that I've stolen your body. Again.”

Her smile froze and she shook her head, patting my nose. “This was never my body, really.”

“But Crumley—”

“Never mind that. I'm in my own body now.”

“—he said you had grown beyond it.”

She wiped her eyes and turned around. “Come on. Yes, I miss it a little. Who wouldn't? You must see why I liked being the dragon now, don't you?”

“Not really.”

“What?” She sounded genuinely shocked. “You hated being the princess.”

“I found it annoying, but it's much more Frank Blackthorne than a fifty-ton lizard could be.”
I raised a taloned hand and flexed my fingers.
“I don't see me picking any pockets.”

“You really would prefer being the princess to being the dragon?”

“As if we had a choice.”
I sighed.

“You're serious.” She turned back to face me. “You're really serious.”

“Lucille, if I could trade you back, I'd do it in a heartbeat.”

“I was sure that once you felt the power. By the gods, the ability to fly—”

“The height makes me nauseous.”

“I can't imagine
not
preferring it.”

“That's why you make the better dragon.”

She looked down and shook her head. Something happened to her smile; it had simultaneously become more genuine, and much slyer. “Daddy is going to be so angry at me,” she whispered.

Before I could say anything, she pulled a familiar evil-looking gem from the folds in her chemise and started putting the chain around her neck.

“No, wait! That's a really bad—”

The world exploded around me, spun 180 degrees and I finished saying, “idea,” in Lucille's voice before the disorientation dropped me to her knees. My head throbbed and the cavern spun around me, and it was an effort not to puke up a breakfast I hadn't eaten.

I blinked the blur from my eyes and looked up to see a huge dragon's skull lift off the ground, point at the cavern ceiling, and roar,
“Yes!”
while spraying flame across the ceiling.

The single syllable slammed daggers into my throbbing head, so I could only imagine what she felt as she grabbed the sides of her own head and moaned, slamming her nose into the ground in front of me.

“OOOOooooooooohhhh.”

I pushed myself up off the ground and stumbled back and sat down on a rock. “That was a stupid stunt!”

“Ugh. I was excited,”
she tried to whisper into the ground.

“I'm not talking about yelling.”

“I know,”
she said to the ground while she rubbed her skull.

I rubbed my own temples in sympathy. “That was as bad an idea as it was for me to wear this jewel in the first place.”

She raised her head to look at me. The way she tilted her head marked her instantly as Lucille.
“Then we're even.”

“Where in the seven hells did you get it?”

“From that boyish girl, Krys.”

“
She
had it?!” My head throbbed at the force of my words.

“She asked me to give it back to you. To tell you, ‘You were right.'”

About something, at least.
I sighed. “And what made you think that would even work?”

“After the body you were born with
 . . .
It's where the soul feels most comfortable.”

I could see the pain in her body language. I remembered all the wounds I'd been feeling and imagined what that must be like after the onslaught of the nasty head trolls that came with the jewel's transfer. Despite all that, I could tell she was genuinely happy.

“And what if this undoes itself in a year and a day?”

She shrugged with a wince.
“You get another chance to be the dragon.”